


The Sphere

by snowshus



Category: Final Fantasy X-2
Genre: Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Sex Tapes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-06 02:18:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18841624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowshus/pseuds/snowshus
Summary: Have you seen Praetor Baralai's sex tape?





	The Sphere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Welsper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welsper/gifts).



Why Seymour made the sphere Gippal couldn’t say. Maybe he wanted blackmail to keep Baralai in his place. Maybe he just wanted to have it to watch again at his pleasure. It hardly matters now, Seymour is dead and whatever motivated him to keep a recording of...of….of that (Gippal can’t even think the word, his mind skitters away and edges around naming what he saw) doesn’t really matter. What matters is that he did and someone found it, someone who had no love for Baralai. Shinra’s commspheres are good but not good enough to share the sphere’s recording that way at least or Gippal is sure they would have. It gets passed around the old fashioned way, copied and handed off from one person to next with the whisper, “have you seen what Praetor Baralai did?” As though Baralai had wanted that, had chosen it. 

Seymour is already dead, three years and counting dead. Gippal can’t exactly kill him more, leaving him with a cold burning anger and no one to exact his revenge on. No one obvious anyways. As much as he wants to it wouldn’t fix anything if he killed the boy who’d handed the sphere to him.

“Who gave you this?” Gippal demands of him instead. 

“I- I don’t know, everyone’s talking about it, so I just-”

“Tell me a name.” Gippal slam the kid against the wall. 

“I don’t know, there’s a guy by mushroom rock selling copies, I don’t know his name.”

“Get out.” 

\-----

He could probably have been subtler about it, but subtle had never really been his style. Besides there’s nothing quite as satisfactory as watching your enemies go up in a big explosion. Gippal watches with satisfaction as all those copies of the sphere turn black and crack apart. 

“My store, oh man.” The man trapped in Gippal’s machina sighs. “What did you do that for?”

“Are you the one who found the sphere?” Gippal asks.

“No way, I’m not a sphere hunter. Those ruins are crawling with fiends,” the man protests.

“Where did you get your copy. Who gave it to you?”

The man peers through bars at Gippal. “Are you seriously planning on backtracking the sphere? You’re insane, you know that, right? That’s impossible. It’s everywhere, man.”

“A name.” Gippal repeats.

The man shrugs, “Alright. I got it from a girl, name was Relisa, she was staying at the same inn in Bevelle. She wasn’t the one who found it though.”

“If I see you again, I’ll feed you to the basilisks.” Gippal warns before releasing him and starting down the road towards Beville, his machina tottering after him.

\-----

The woman from the inn winds up being a dead end. Rasila left Beville nearly two weeks ago and could be anywhere in Spira by now. There are other leads to follow, Gippal just has to find someone else with the sphere and start again. That’s shouldn’t be to hard as the man said, they're everywhere. Eventually he’ll find his way to whomever released it. In the meantime he has one more stop he needs to make.

\---

“Did you watch it?” Is the first thing Baralai says when Gippal enters the room.

“No, not past the first few minutes anyways.”

“Too bad,” Baralai shrugs with a plastic fragile smile. “I’ve heard I look ravishing when I’m crying.”

“You’re honestly going to pretend you’re not bothered by it?” Gippal demands, the question that’s been burning in mind since he saw it. Why is Baralai just letting this go on. Why isn’t he saying anything, doing anything about it?

“Of course I’m bothered. It’s humiliating, but I can’t really do anything about it now, can I?” Baralai snaps before pulling himself back in, taking a breath. “Besides who’s ever behind this is clearly an ameatur at this whole politicking thing because releasing the sphere like this, uncut, was probably the best way they could have done it for me. I’m actually quite luckily.” He says like he believes it but Gippal can still here the bitterness leaking through the words. 

“How is any of this good?”

“If they knew what they were doing, really knew, there’s plenty in the sphere that could be edited to be quite damning for my reputation, in a lot of different ways. As it is though I look no worse than just another victim of a person all of Spira already thinks was a sadistic madman. It’s humiliating yes, but hardly career ending. And that’s just if they were bent on releasing it. There are things in that video I would have done almost anything to keep secret. If they had played this smarter I could have been at their disposal until the day I died.” 

“I wasn’t just talking about this situation, now. But what they did, you know, what’s on the sphere.”

“What about it?”

“‘Lai,” Gippal says quietly falling back on the old nickname he used with the younger, sweet naive kid he’d gotten to know on the Crimson Squad all those years ago, like by using the nickname he could talk to that kid again, instead of the distant man in front of him. “They raped you.”

“I know,” Baralai picks up a paper as though he’s going to start working again. “If you only watched a few minutes you probably didn’t even get to the good stuff.”

“Are you...okay? I mean are you...I don’t know what I mean,” Gippal drops his hands from where he’d been trying to gesticulate some actual meaning into the words.

“Gippal, it was years ago and honestly at the time it was just one more terrible thing to happen. After what we went through in cave and than Nooj. I didn’t really care about what was happening to me. It’s not like I didn’t know going to Seymour was going to carry risks, but I found the information I needed on Vegnagun. So...”

“Are you trying to tell me it was worth it?”

Baralai looks away and shrugs, “Seymour is dead, Vegnagun destroyed, and I currently control the vast majority of the political power in the world, so maybe it was.”

Gippal shakes his head and leaves. 

\---

Gippal’s leads dry up, one by one. He should go home. Baralai has told him to several times now. He’s even argued that Gippal is making this harder for him by driving the man responsible further underground. According to Baralai if they wait eventually the lack of action will drive this person to make a move, exposing themselves. He’s probably right, but there’s something very satisfying about watching all those sphere’s turn black and fall apart.

Eventually he has to give in. His plan isn’t working and Baralai seems to know what he’s talking about. It’s probably for the best.

He was going to go home. He’s really was, until Paine came by.

“You haven’t watched the sphere have you,” Paine says by way greeting.

“Of course not. Baralai is our friend, I can’t believe you did.” 

“Of course I did. Baralai is our friend,” She echos back to him. “I needed to see the faces of everyone who touched him so when I see them again I can kill them. You should watch it,” she adds not looking at him anymore. “I think you need to.”

“He doesn’t want us to.”

“Did he say that?” She asks then continues without waiting for an answer. “There’s something-I cut out the other stuff so you don’t have to watch the whole thing. But I think you should see this part,” she says handing him a glowing sphere.

The sphere sits on Gippal’s room like an accusation. Paine’s awkward insistence that he watch it and his own curiosity warring with his respect for Baralai’s privacy.

Paine and curiosity win. 

The sphere starts up at the 45 min mark and it’s already hard to look at Baralai still struggling against his attackers, despite clearly having lost the fight ages ago.

“Can’t you do anything about him, I mean it’s fun when they fight, but this is just getting old.” The guy currently trying to hold open Baralai’s legs asks Seymour.

“I suppose,” Seymour says with a wave of his hand and the familiar hum of magic fills the sphere and sparkling haze surrounds Baralai for a moment and all his muscles seem to relax at once. At first Gippal thinks Seymour cast sleep, but then Baralai moves, reaches up to the man he’d been fighting so hard a moment ago. 

“You came. I knew it. I knew you’d come save me.” 

The smile on the man’s face turns Gippal’s stomach as he strokes Baralai’s cheek. “That’s right sweetheart, I’m here to rescue you.” 

He leans down to kiss Baralai and Baralai’s legs wrap around his waist as he sighs a quiet word that Gippal probably wouldn’t have been able to make out if it hadn’t been his own name. 

\--

“I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry.” He’s saying as soon as the door to Baralai’s room opens, he may have been repeating the phrase over and over since the sphere ended.

“You finally watched it,” Baralai says and it’s not a question.

“I would have. I should have, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Gippal repeats like a broken record. 

“I really didn’t want you to know about that part.” Baralai sighs and pulls Gippal in, not bothering to turn on any lights. In the darkness all the changes of the past three years are hidden in shadows and Gippal almost feels like he’s facing the old Baralai.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know. I know you would have come, but you couldn’t. You didn’t even know until a few weeks ago that it had even happened.” Baralai is calm and factual but Gippal can’t stop seeing the way he’d cried and clung to man he’d been tricked into thinking was Gippal. He wants to reach for him, wants to reach through him to the Baralai in the sphere. He wants to go back through time and bust open the door and kill everyone in the room and scoop Baralai up and take him home where he’d be safe. 

Baralai takes his hand, and bring it up to rest against his cheek. “I’m okay, see. I’m fine now.” 

Baralai’s cheek is warm and the palm of his hand is damp where it holds Gippal’s hand in place. In the moonlight his hair glows sliver and the shadows of his skin deepen. Gippal’s hand moves down his face, to trace the smooth, dry contour of Baralai’s lips. There’s no blood smeared across his chin, no broken skin from ill use. His neck is equally unblemished, the dark bruising from hands and fingers holding him down long healed. 

“Are planning to check everywhere?” Baralai laughs and it’s almost his normal laugh and not the brittle thing Gippal heard last time they talked.

Gippal doesn’t answer. He hadn’t really been planning anything. He just needed to see that Baralai was as fine as he professed to be. He doesn’t take his hand away from where Baralai’s collar meets though.

“Why not, I’ve always wondered what the real you would be like,” Baralai says more to himself then Gippal as he steps into Gippal’s space, his arms wrapping around Gippal’s neck.

Gippal isn’t sure exactly when his fingers had wrapped themselves in fabric of Baralai’s shirt but they are and he’s pulling Baralai in the last few centimeters to kiss him. 

Baralai’s lips are soft against his. They kiss slowly, never more deeply then a press of lips to lips as Baralai leads them to the bed. 

Baralai’s shirt is on the floor and Gippal’s hands are cataloging every inch of smooth skin until they hit the rough raised knot where Nooj shot him. Baralai’s hand drifts up his bareback to find the matching scar on his left shoulder. 

“You died you know,” Baralai whispers. “I had to use all the magic I knew to repair your heart before you were too far gone.”

Gippal did not know that. All he remembers is hearing the gunshot and then distantly a second one before it all faded away. When he woke up again it had been in the bed at the inn, Baralai next to him with bandages wrapped around his chest. Gippal had no potions and no money at the time to buy any, so he’d just had to wait and watch as Baralai’s body healed itself the old fashioned way. 

“You were gone.” Baralai says his hands drifting away from the scar and suddenly light as a ghosts, barely touching him.

“I’m okay, you saved me.”

“No, when I woke up, you were gone.”

“Oh,” Gippal remembers that, he reaches across to grab one of Baralai’s hands, shifting all of his weight to rest on his knees. He brings the hand up to his mouth and kiss each finger in apology. “They’d found us. Kinoc's general was going around the town asking if anyone had seen a man with silver hair travelling with an Al Bhed. There were at least three other people in the inn alone that matched your description, and they didn’t have a picture with them. I was the only Al Bhed in the entire town. If I stayed they would have found you.” 

Baralai doesn’t say anything as Gippal kisses the palm of his hand. “I was willing to anything to protect you, even if it meant leaving.”

Gippal is unprepared for the sudden shift in the bed and he probably would have fallen off if Baralai’s arms hadn’t wrapped around him as his face pressed against Gippal’s shoulder. 

“I just wanted you there,” Baralai says as his shoulders start to shake and his eyelashes become wet where they’re pressed against Gippal. “I would gone anywhere with you, done anything to stay with you. I just wanted you there.”

“I’m sorry.” Gippal runs his fingers through Baralai’s hair and over his back. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t let them find you. I couldn’t let you die because of me. I’m sorry.”

“I thought it was you.” Baralai confesses in shuddering sobs, “I did anything they asked, everything they asked because it was you and I’d have done anything for you even though I knew, I knew, it couldn’t be you, that you’d never make me do that, but I couldn’t--” he breaks off.

“I wouldn’t have, I’d have killed every single one of them and I would have taken you home with me and I never would have asked for anything you didn’t want.” Gippal presses his lips to the side of Baralai’s head, “never.”

“I know, I knew.” Baralai says pulling back enough to reach Gippal’s lips and this time the kiss is messy and desperate and tastes like salt. “Please, I want-I need-for real, please.”

“Anything, anything ‘Lai.” Gippal leans them back onto the bed, slowly and carefully. He kisses each damp eye and down the tear stained cheeks. Everyone was wrong, Baralai doesn’t look ravishing when he cries. He looks sad, and miserable and Gippal would do anything to never see him cry again. 

He takes his time, leaving a trail of light kisses across Baralai’s neck and down his chest, untying his pants and sliding them down, until Baralai can kick them off himself. He catches one of Baralai’s legs and brings his knee up to where he can place a soft kiss against it, then down the inside of his thigh until he reaches cock. Baralai jumps when he presses a kiss to the base and lets out a soft “Oh,” so Gippal does it again and licks up to take the head in his mouth. Above him Baralai hands twist in the pillows as he breathe’s shorten with each bob of Gippal’s head. That won’t do. 

Gippal slides off and up the length of Baralai’s body. He carefully pulls Baralai’s hands away from the pillow and they curl into his tangling their fingers together as Baralai’s mouth finds his again in a open panting kiss that brings their bodies together, their cocks to brush against each other. Baralai jerks, his back arches and he moves against Gippal, pressing up into the feelings. Gippal moves with him, they rock together, foreheads pressed against each other and hands intertwined as they chase feeling in perfect concert until Baralai’s fingers tighten and his breath becomes staccato moans and his come paints the places where’s bodies separate and mixes with Gippal’s own.

\---

In the morning light Baralai looks himself again, not so much the shadowy illusion of three years ago that Gippal had been trying to reach last night. His shoulder resting across Gippal’s chest has weight and Gippal can see the small imperfections of dark spots and small scars from the sort of insignificant injuries life is full of. There is nothing to show what happened to him, no lasting mark on his body. 

Baralai shifts next to him, his forehead and soft hair drag across Gippal’s chest as he draws himself up to kneel on the bed. Last night had been very much about the past, a whisper of what should have been. The Baralai sitting naked but for the pool of sheets surrounding them, is very much the Baralai of now and Gippal suddenly desperately wants him. It isn’t at all like the way he’d felt last night. This is much more the way he’d used want Baralai, in the desert with the Crimson Squad when the way the big desert sun had turned Baralia's silver hair into a halo and made his dark skin look like melted gold. It had made something in Gippal ache to touch him. He’d thought he’d been long over those feelings but maybe they’d just been sleeping, waiting for the sun to catch on the silver of Baralai’s hair again to wake them up.

“Morning,” Baralai mumbles sleepily, and Gippal sits up to kiss him.

“Oh,” Baralai blinks his hand coming up to touch his mouth when they separate, and then he smiles, a real smile full and bright like Gippal hasn’t seen since this whole thing with the sphere began. “Yes,” he answers Gippal’s unasked question throwing himself back into Gippal’s arms, with enough force to knock them back over and knock their teeth together in a wild kiss. 

\---

Gippal has searched every dirty corner of Bevelle, of Spira, to find the person responsible for releasing the sphere to the public with nothing to show for it. It figures he’d find them here, back in Djose where it all began. The man is trying to sell his services, he’s not just a regular sphere hunter apparently, he can get you anything you want, anything you need. You want blackmail on someone he’ll find it, you want that sphere of your parents you lost thirty years ago, he’ll get that too. If you need proof of services, he was once hired to find something to use against the Praetor of New Yevon and just look what he found. 

Gippal has his hands around the man’s throat before he finishes the sentence. 

“Who hired you!”

The man gives up the name quickly, loyalty clearly not one of his few virtues. Gippal reluctantly lets him go. 

“If I ever see you again, you will not be so lucky.”

The name Gippal has been given is familiar, a sort of distant tingle of recognition though from where Gippal can’t recall.

It isn’t until he’s found him in an run down, empty hut outside Bevelle that Gippal remembers where he knows the name. It’s one of Kinoc’s underlings, an old Crusader general who’d been hunting the three of them down after they escaped the Den of Woes. Baralai was wrong. This wasn’t the move an ameatur political rival. This was just a pathetic old man who’d wanted to hurt him, no other motive, no other game and no one around care what happens next.

Gippal has no regrets as the cleans the blood of his shoes. It’s still early in the day, maybe he can pay a visit to Baralai, if he isn’t too busy with work.


End file.
